Service Catalogue Project Pitfalls

One of the most difficult things to do when approached to create a service catalogue for an organization is to help them realize that it's almost impossible to quote them on the amount of work to be done when you don't know where they currently are or where they want to go.

Companies are often rightfully hesitant in engaging consultants in time-and-materials contracts when they cannot quantify the volume of work or the deliverable.  Often they have been burned by consultants who promise high value service catalogues only to deliver worthless documentation.

I struggled with this for a while.  Not knowing what documentation they currently have and not knowing what level of maturity they hope to obtain from their service catalogue makes quoting for a service catalogue creation or improvement project almost impossible.

My solution is to offer a fixed price or capped price project for the initial phases and then depending on the situation at the client, offer a fixed price or time and materials engagement for the production of the service catalogue processes and documentation.

The first phase is always a discovery phase.  Find out where the client is with respect to their service catalogue's maturity.  They always have some form of catalogue, even if they haven't identified it as such.  This phase also involves educating the client in what they could do with a highly functional catalogue and let them decide how far they want to take it and how many of their ITSM or ITIL processes they want to integrate into the service catalogue.  Usually the deliverables for this phase are strategy documents, a road map, SWOT analysis and RACI charts.  This phase identifies where they are and where they want to be and makes planning for all future phases much more accurate.

I am a big believer in the teach a man to fish philosophy so my next phase is for process definition.  Here is where we define the KPIs, catalogue update processes, governance structure, management processes and SLA measurement processes.

The third phase I recommend is for the actual production of a service catalogue entry as well as the education of the managers of the service catalogue processes.  By this point I usually have a good understanding of where the client is and wants to be as well as the capabilities of all the process participants. The client can be fairly confident in the scope of the number of catalogue entries they need me to mentor their staff into producing.

This phase is where we implement the service catalogue management processes and integrate them into other processes like change management, PMO requirements, incident management etc.  This also gives us a chance to implement the governance structure and measure for the KPIs while fine tuning any issues that arise.  This is also where catalogue entries start to get published for their intended audience.  This is also where you ensure that continuous improvement is built-in so that the process evolves as it needs to or as the situation changes.

This hopefully is where the engagement ends.  The client should have the capability to produce all other entries and to maintain a fully actionable service catalogue.  Some clients also prefer to expedite the production of their catalogue entries by extending the engagement to produce a fixed number of services or even their entire portfolio.

For more information on Service Catalogue engagements please contact tony@tonydenford.com.

Don't settle for a service list when you wanted a service catalogue

Recently I've been approached a few times by organizations looking to put together a service catalogue.  My first question to all of them is "Why?".

Their answer is very important as it will determine if I will take the engagement or turn it down.  My rule of thumb is that if the person asking for the service catalogue cannot tell me right away the advantages of an actionable service catalogue then the engagement will be an educational consulting engagement.  If the person says "Because my boss told me we need one!" then I will probably walk away.

These engagements will typically fail or will offer little to no value to the customer and if I cannot add value to a client, I won't accept the engagement.  Not knowing what they could do with a service catalogue is a sign that they have unrealistic expectations and even the statement of work will probably be a waste of time for me to produce.

A fully functional service catalogue is a powerful tool for IT service management and can significantly improve your organizations service delivery, help you with the service strategy and service design and can be fully integrated into your continuous improvement initiative.  Not only can it make your IT team more effective, it can also act as a communication medium with your customers helping them understand what IT does and what expectations they should have with your levels of service.

All too often I'm contacted to fix an existing service catalogue.  Someone who doesn't understand the usefulness of a service catalogue has gone down a long and expensive road to produce a 'list' of existing services.  Although this can quantify the services provided it provides very little value.  More often then not, the list is from the viewpoint of IT not the consumer of the service and will become out of date almost as soon as it's published.  If you are producing a service catalogue from the point of view of implemented components then you have produced data that should probably reside in your CMDB.

So what should you keep in mind when producing (or engaging to produce) a service catalogue?

• All services should be from the viewpoint of the consumer.  When I go through the drive through at a coffee shop I order the coffee, pay for it, receive it and walk away.  I don't care about how many coffee machines they have, how much water they consume, if they have enough sugar, etc.
• Determine what information is useful in a service catalogue.  What the service is, what the expected service levels should be, cost, how to initiate the service, etc.
• Determine how the catalogue will be produced for new services or kept up to date for existing services.  It needs to be an integrated deliverable through PMO and change management processes.
• Determine the KPIs for each service.  Use the consumers experience of the service as a guide.  Was my coffee delivered in a timely manner?  Was my order correct?  Did I get the correct change?  Also base the KPIs on your your service strategy.  If the strategy to be fast, accurate, friendly, high quality or a combination of those things make sure your KPIs reflect the strategy.  If your strategy does not reflect the wants of the consumers then you may need to revisit the strategy.
• Ensure roles and responsibilities for management of the service catalogue are well documented and understood.
• Ensure the integration points for other IT service management practices are in place. Incident management, change management, capacity management, financial management, etc.  This is where you will get the full value of a catalogue.
• Develop the content for the catalogue and publish it.  Use automated tools if costs are not prohibitive and allow self service wherever possible.
• Once the catalogue is in place, measure it's effectiveness and continuously improve.

Hopefully these tips will help establish a useful service catalogue instead of another document that will sit on a shelf and be forgotten.

For more information on producing an actionable service catalogue, contact tony@tonydenford.com.

Shut up and drive!

ITSM is a complicated beast. There are multiple disciplines all interlinked and a general lack of understanding from those outside the industry as to what it is and why they should care.


The big issue is that ITSM practitioners very often feed into this confusion by using too much jargon and too many promises of service excellence without articulating just how it will happen.

As ITSM consultants we need to do a better job of understanding the viewpoint of our customers. For example, if I am paying the bill I don’t want to necessarily be promised “Service Excellence”. Service Excellence sounds expensive and do I need excellence or is there an option to offer superior or right-sized levels of service? If I’m purchasing a car for example, do I want to but the fastest car on the market or do I need to balance my wants with my needs and my available budget?

We also need to do a better job of not over-complicating what IT Service Management is. The first conversation should not be about configuration items or integration between the incident management process and the service catalogue although you better be able to explain these concepts if the customer is interested.

Back to my car analogy; I don’t really care about every component and how they work but I do care that when I need the car to work, it starts, operates safely and can facilitate me getting from point A to point B in an efficient manner. I also like to know that if I have an issue that I have a trustworthy mechanic available to restore the service and hopefully spot issues before they occur through regular maintenance.

If ITSM practitioners can concisely describe the concept of managing IT services in business terms then I think the industry will be recognized as an enabler rather than a misunderstood expense.

Everyone can innovate, so why aren't they?

At a recent engagement I was told that the team I was about to lead was VERY seasoned.  I thought this was great.  An opportunity to leverage their combined expertise to build a world class ITSM practice for this client.

What I found though was not a team eager to innovate and impress their customer.  I found a team that were paralyzed by fear.  They were being held back by two things.  The first was a fear of making a decision without prior management approval, the second was the fear of any type of change.

It's easy to see that years of mismanagement or micro-management was the cause of these two issues but how do you get them out of this cycle and even better, to a place where they innovate?

The first step is to set a direction, let them know what your overall vision is for the team and then empower them to make working level decisions based on their knowledge of that vision.  If they are the slightest bit intelligent, they should be able to make decisions to direct you all towards a single goal.  Yes they will occasionally make mistakes but don't threaten to splatter their blood on the walls if they do.  Instead either clarify the goal or direction or, if necessary, change it!  As long as you clearly set some direction they will follow it and if they don't you have an HR issue to deal with.

The second step is to give them the time to innovate.  The team I inherited were told they could ONLY work on something if the request came from an approved client.  The result of this was periods of padding the time spent on approved work to cover time spent waiting for more approved work.  This is a great example of someone taking something they read in an ITIL book and applying it without the filter of common sense.  Yes everything they work on should be recorded but it should also be realistic.  If there are points of inefficiency in your process, how are you going to find them if the numbers have been changed to show 100% utilization of all resources?

If there is any downtime, find some way of using it to innovate.  Allow the team to look for continuous improvement opportunities.  If there is absolutely no downtime then you need to build some innovation time into the work flow.  Without it, the current situation will never get any better and if your business picks up you will not have the resources to cope.

If you're leaving the innovation to management, you are wasting a huge amount of capacity that the team possesses.  Letting everyone know what the team is trying to achieve and not only enable but expect the team to innovate will not only provide results, it will increase engagement, morale and ultimately customer satisfaction.

For more information on building effective ITSM teams, contact tony@tonydenford.com.

Time to Rescue your ITSM implementation?

Tired of not seeing the promised benefits of your ITIL implementation?  Tired of ITIL consultants documenting processes that nobody follows?

ITSM Rescue is an innovative way to pull your ITIL implementation out of the hole it's fallen into.

  

Full IT Service management means collaboration between several ITIL practices with the right interfaces to see the full potential of an ITIL based ITSM solution. Done right, your IT department will purr along with;

• faster issue turnaround
• better responsiveness to your business partners
• improved efficiencies
• improved quality
• excellent customer service
• better communication
• improved relationships and partnerships with the business
• lower total cost of ownership
• better control over operational spending
• continuous improvement culture

Instead of just trying to implement individual ITIL processes without a view of the big picture, ITSM Rescue uses ITIL principals to coach and mentor your IT Service team in the latest techniques while correcting the mistakes which have been holding your implementation back.

So, What is ITSM Rescue?

ITSM Rescue is a process whereby we assess your current IT Service management practices and work with you to define a service strategy. Once the current situation is understood we perform a complete gap analysis and develop a road-map to service excellence. The next step is to implement a governance structure to determine priorities and then systematically correct the pitfalls that have been stopping you from realizing the promised benefits of ITIL. Using the best Incident and Problem Management techniques we correct the behaviours that are ineffective for best in class ITSM delivery. We use change management techniques to improve the teams Service Management Maturity Level while simultaneously developing a comprehensive service catalogue for ITSM Services.

This hands-on mentoring approach will develop your team and teach them the techniques needed to roll out a world class ITSM practice that your business partners will notice.

ITSM Rescue was developed by Tony Denford, an ITSM implementation expert who specializes in improving under performing ITIL and ITSM implementations and coaching IT Service Management teams to be high performers.

For more information on ITSM Rescue, contact tony@tonydenford.com.

IT Service Management in the Cloud

When most CIOs start to think about their cloud strategy, the thought of "losing control" of their IT environment is usually the first big concern.  Most are not comfortable with handing over control of the services they deliver, primarily because they don't have a clear understanding of what services they deliver and therefore cannot look for the right opportunities to use the cloud as an advantage.

This makes a good IT Service Management strategy ever more important.  Instead of the older ITIL V2 methods which manage specific assets, you need to be focused more than ever on IT Service delivery whether that service is managed in-house or some mysterious location in the cloud.

Before moving your infrastructure to the cloud and realizing the potential savings of doing so you really need to have your IT service management in place and running smoothly.

A mature ITSM practice will have a good understanding of what services are being provided, exactly how they perform, how much it costs to deliver the service and, most importantly, exactly what is required to deliver the service with the quality expected by your customers.

Knowing how much the services cost and what is required for them to be considered of value to the business puts organizations in an excellent position to move parts of their platform to the cloud.  Vendors you deal with for any cloud solution can then be held accountable for ensuring the service delivery by your own internal IT Service Management team.

Your ITSM team should know how to measure the delivery, how to ensure costs are in line with expectations and that the vendors are capable of delivering consistently or held accountable when they don't.

So the operational role of IT is changing from managing all the nuts and bolts required to support your business to managing the vendors and support processes required to ensure consistent service excellence.

For more information on how Tony Denford can help your organisation manage it's IT Service Management practice, contact tony@tonydenford.com.

Continuous Improvement Vs. Big Bang

So your in the business of making money and you're doing OK but your shareholders expect more. 
Sure, projects usually start with an ROI calculation but we all know that these projections are often optimistic or misleading to benefit your system integrators and do your shareholders really want to wait 2 to 5 years to see a return on their money?

While big bang projects can be great to get your organization into a new market (think iPod) they are far less effective at making you money at your core business and more and more these days, by the time you've waited 5 years to see your return on the project, the technology is obsolete.

So what's the alternative? 

Strategically you will be much better off with a continuous improvement methodology rather than starting a project to do everything differently.


I learned a lot about continuous improvement or kaizen during my time at Toyota.  Continuous improvement allows you to add quality or value to your product or service and reduce the cost of providing that product or service.  Effectively you can give your customers more for less which increases your margin.  And it doesn't just increase your margin once.  Every time you provide that service you are getting an immediate return and the more times you're doing it, the more you're adding to your bottom line.
 
So how do you introduce a continuous improvement culture? 
 
Unless you know how a service is performing now, it's impossible to know if any improvements you make have actually had the desired results so step one is measure the service.  At a bare minimum you should know how often it is performed, the cost of performing it, the benefit from performing it and the affect not performing it would have on your business.  You can also measure more intangible thing like, for example, the affect on reputation.
 
Once you know how your services are performing you must take some time to look over the data.  Try to identify areas for improvement.  Where can you improve quality, lower costs, reduce waste, remove customer frustration, improve reputation, whatever is important to your business.
 
Don't necessarily try to fix all of these things at once.  Look for improvements that are easy to implement first, implement them, continue to measure the service as it's provided and then review the data to see if it had the desired affect.  If service improved, leave the change in place.  If not, remove the change and go back to how it was done before.
 
Now do the whole thing again!  Look at your data, make an improvement, measure it's effectiveness, keep it or go back.  If you can introduce this cycle into your day-to-day operations you will be well on your way to continuous improvement.  Also have larger cycles to look for larger improvement opportunities.
 
Try to encourage everyone, at every level to suggest improvements.  Make it part of their process.
 
What about the risk of all that change?
 
Look at it this way... If you on a boat going from point A to point B would you rather have a big bang project that spends a year planning the route and sets off only to find out later that the projections of wind strength were not accurate or that someone didn't take into account that you competitors are firing cannon balls at your boat?
 
Continuous improvement allows you to declare where you want to go, set out and then repeatedly make adjustments in your route as conditions in the marketplace change.  It is far more adaptable to the change going on all around us.  As long as you manage your change process you can control the risk.
 
Do you sometimes need a big bang project to bring something to market?  Of course but once it's implemented keep ahead of the market using continuous improvement.
 
For more information on getting more from your services, contact tony@tonydenford.com.
 

What's your Service Strategy?

At the heart of every IT service management practice should be the Service Strategy. Without a well defined service strategy it is very difficult to have any cohesiveness with how your services are delivered and therefore you may find yourself with a hit-or-miss approach to your IT service delivery.

If you find your organisation is delivering IT services inconsistantly or on their "best-effort" then you can almost guaranty that not enough time has been spent thinking about the enterprise service strategy.

You will need to make some decisions around how you want to support each service. Start by defining the services, what value they bring to the organization and how strategic they are to your company's goals.

Focus on the true value of each service. Not just on the dollar value but how poor delivery will affect things like customer relationships, employee moral, reputation, efficiency, safety and security. Without understanding the true value of each service it is hard to make decisions on where you should focus your resources and you will either end up with excessive redundency or lack of capacity to control the service delivery.

Once you have a solid strategy in place you can set the foundation for your service design, transition, operation and ultimately continual improvement.

For more information on IT Service Strategy email tony@tonydenford.com.